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How Whales Become Toxic Waste

 

Trashed: No Place for Waste

Candida Brady 2013

 

Film Review

Narrated by British actor Jeremy Irons, the main theme of the new documentary Trashed: No Place for Waste  is the major health danger posed by the 7 billion tons of garbage we discard every year. The film focuses primarily on dioxins, PCBs, phthalates, bisphenyl A, and other endocrine disruptors – particularly the role they play in a growing epidemic of cancer, autoimmune disease, infertility, and neurodegenerative disease. Thanks to a 2005 Center for Disease Control study, there’s growing international awareness that all human beings carry an average of 148 of these toxic chemicals circulating in their blood stream. However prior to seeing Trashed, I was unaware that landfills and waste incinerators were a primary source of these chemicals.

How Whales Become Hazardous Waste

Irons focuses heavily on incinerators, which pose immense problems for the entire global population. The toxic chemicals they release concentrate in large fish (who eat lots of little fish) and sea mammals, particularly in colder regions. It was shocking to hear a marine biologist talk about whales and dolphins being discarded as hazardous waste because of their high toxic chemical load. At present most killer whales are unable to reproduce, owing to their heavy exposure to endocrine disruptors. Human couples are also having more and more difficulty conceiving, as evidenced by the growing demand for in vitro fertilization.

British biochemist Paul Connett, a leading environmental health expert, features prominently in this part of the film. Author of The Case against Fluoride: How Hazardous Waste Ended Up in Our Drinker Water and the Bad Science and Power Politics That Keep It There, Connett’s a local hero here in New Plymouth. In 2011, he helped us persuade New Plymouth District Council to remove fluoride from our water supply.

Plastic Soup

The second half of the film addresses the tons of plastic filling up our oceans. The world produces 260 million tons of plastic every year. Plastic, which is manufactured from petroleum, consumes 8% of global oil production. Yet 30% of it is discarded within a year.

Although it never totally degrades, it eventually breaks up into confetti-sized fragments. Studies reveal the oceans contain six times as much of this plastic soup as microscopic zoo-plankton, the basic food source at the bottom of the food chain.

The Ultimate Solution: Eliminate Packaging

 The documentary ends on an optimistic note, with a tour of communities participating in the Zero Waste movement. According to Irons, the most desirable solution is to pressure corporations to dispense with plastic packaging in the first instance. Consumers also need to lean on supermarkets and other retailers to dispense more foods in bulk, as well as allowing shoppers to bring their own reusable containers to take them home. This will also greatly reduce food costs, given that packaging makes up more than half the sticker price.

 Aggressive Recycling

 In the mean time, a stronger commitment to recycling can go a long way towards keeping toxic chemicals out of our water and food and plastics out of the ocean. Waste analysts estimate that 90% of waste can be recycled at a potential savings of ₤6.4 billion ($US 9.9 billion) a year. Approximately 1.5 million jobs could be created in the process. By reusing these materials instead of replacing them, the reduction in climate pollution would be equivalent to taking half the world’s cars off the road.

New Zealand Premier

The New Plymouth Green Party is sponsoring the first New Zealand showing of Trashed on Thursday 24 October at 7:30 pm at St Mary’s Peace Hall ($10 admission).

photo credit: theburied.life via photopin cc

Reposted from Dissident Voice

How Whales Become Hazardous Waste

 

Trashed: No Place for Waste

Candida Brady 2013

 

Film Review

Narrated by British actor Jeremy Irons, the main theme of the new documentary Trashed: No Place for Waste  is the major health danger posed by the 7 billion tons of garbage we discard every year. The film focuses primarily on dioxins, PCBs, phthalates, bisphenyl A, and other endocrine disruptors – particularly the role they play in a growing epidemic of cancer, autoimmune disease, infertility, and neurodegenerative disease. Thanks to a 2005 Center for Disease Control study, there’s growing international awareness that all human beings carry an average of 148 of these toxic chemicals circulating in their blood stream. However prior to seeing Trashed, I was unaware that landfills and waste incinerators were a primary source of these chemicals.

How Whales Become Hazardous Waste

Irons focuses heavily on incinerators, which pose immense problems for the entire global population. The toxic chemicals they release concentrate in large fish (who eat lots of little fish) and sea mammals, particularly in colder regions. It was shocking to hear a marine biologist talk about whales and dolphins being discarded as hazardous waste because of their high toxic chemical load. At present most killer whales are unable to reproduce, owing to their heavy exposure to endocrine disruptors. Human couples are also having more and more difficulty conceiving, as evidenced by the growing demand for in vitro fertilization.

British biochemist Paul Connett, a leading environmental health expert, features prominently in this part of the film. Author of The Case against Fluoride: How Hazardous Waste Ended Up in Our Drinker Water and the Bad Science and Power Politics That Keep It There, Connett’s a local hero here in New Plymouth. In 2011, he helped us persuade New Plymouth District Council to remove fluoride from our water supply.

Plastic Soup

The second half of the film addresses the tons of plastic filling up our oceans. The world produces 260 million tons of plastic every year. Plastic, which is manufactured from petroleum, consumes 8% of global oil production. Yet 30% of it is discarded within a year.

Although it never totally degrades, it eventually breaks up into confetti-sized fragments. Studies reveal the oceans contain six times as much of this plastic soup as microscopic zoo-plankton, the basic food source at the bottom of the food chain.

The Ultimate Solution: Eliminate Packaging

 The documentary ends on an optimistic note, with a tour of communities participating in the Zero Waste movement. According to Irons, the most desirable solution is to pressure corporations to dispense with plastic packaging in the first instance. Consumers also need to lean on supermarkets and other retailers to dispense more foods in bulk, as well as allowing shoppers to bring their own reusable containers to take them home. This will also greatly reduce food costs, given that packaging makes up more than half the sticker price.

 Aggressive Recycling

 In the mean time, a stronger commitment to recycling can go a long way towards keeping toxic chemicals out of our water and food and plastics out of the ocean. Waste analysts estimate that 90% of waste can be recycled at a potential savings of ₤6.4 billion ($US 9.9 billion) a year. Approximately 1.5 million jobs could be created in the process. By reusing these materials instead of replacing them, the reduction in climate pollution would be equivalent to taking half the world’s cars off the road.

New Zealand Premier

The New Plymouth Green Party is sponsoring the first New Zealand showing of Trashed on Thursday 24 October at 7:30 pm at St Mary’s Peace Hall ($10 admission).

photo credit: theburied.life via photopin cc

The Role of Foreign Banks in US History

Stuff They Forgot to Teach in High School

The Money Masters

Ben Still 1996

Film Review

 

Produced twelve years before the 2008 economic collapse, The Money Masters provides a comprehensive outline of the role of the international banking cartel in hijacking America’s so-called “democratic” government. Referring to them as “moneychangers” (a New Testament reference), Still explores the key role international banksters have played in deliberately creating depressions and panics, instigating US wars, and assassinating presidents who sought to curtail their power.

Understanding how money is created in the US and other capitalist countries is essential in grasping this historical perspective. Contrary to popular misconception, the federal government doesn’t create or control the money supply – private banks do. Moreover the Federal Reserve isn’t a government agency. It’s actually a private corporation owned by its member banks. What’s more, the fractional reserve banking system allows these banks to loan and charge interest on money they don’t possess – that they essentially create out of thin air.

Most of the film is devoted to the 130 year battle between the world banking cartel and the American presidents who stood up to them: Jefferson, Madison, Andrew Jackson, Lincoln, McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, and Warren Harding. Jefferson and Madison both warned that allowing private banks to seize control of money creation would be the end of democratic rule in the US.

During the 19th century, the global banking cartel was dominated by key families, like the Rothschilds and Rockefellers. However during the 20th century, this power shifted to a corporate structure with control residing with CEOs and interlocking boards. Still stresses that global economic and political instability can no longer be blamed on specific families (i.e. the Rothschilds) – that the problem lies with the corporate banking system itself.

The solution he proposes is to end fractional reserve banking and the ability of private banks to create money – to follow Lincoln’s example by restoring the responsibility for money creation to federal and state governments.

As the 3 ½ hour film below covers nearly 1000 years of history, I have indexed the key historical events covered:

0-21 min – 1100 AD King Henry I creates the tally stick to counter the influence of private goldsmiths and moneychangers who are wreaking economic havoc by manipulating the supply of gold coins.
22-27 min – 17th century Queen Elizabeth I counters the power of private moneychangers by issuing coins directly from the royal treasury. In 1642, international moneychangers finance Oliver Cromwell, who leads a Civil War to overthrow the monarchy. Later they finance an invasion by the Dutch William of Orange to invade England and overthrow the House of Stuart. In 1694 Bank of England (the world’s first central bank) is formed and granted power to create money out of thin air.
28-36 min 18th century Amschel Moses Bower, Frankfurt moneychanger, changes his name to Rothschild and five of his sons assume control of the central banks of Germany, Austria, London, Italy and Paris. The Rothschild family plays major role in financing the Vanderbilt and Harrison railroad monopolies, Carnegie’s monopoly of the steel industry, and 80% of JP Morgan’s holdings. The Rothschild family proceeds to finance both sides of a continuous cycle of European wars. The British treasury incurs a 140 million pound debt to the Bank of England. George III is forced to raise revenue by taxing the American colonies.
37-38 min 1764 Under pressure from the Bank of England, George III passes currency act forbidding the use of colonial scrip (paper money) in the American colonies. Forced to use scarce gold and silver coins issued by the Bank of England, the colonies are plunged into deep depression with massive unemployment. Benjamin Franklin maintains this, not the tea tax, triggers the American Revolution.
39-44 min 1781 Over strong objections of Jefferson and Madison, charter is granted for the Bank of North America, a privately owned central bank which is allowed to create money out of thin air. Charter allowed to lapse in 1785, and power to issue money reverts to federal government.
45–51 min 1790 Alexander Hamilton pressures Congress to charter a second private bank, the Bank of the United States. The US Treasury, which provides all the funds, is a 20% shareholder. The Bank creates money out of thin air to loan funds to private shareholders to purchase the other 80%.
52-99 min 1811 Congress refuses to renew Bank of US charter, despite a threat by Nathan Mayer Rothschild that “ . . .the United Stateswill find itself involved in a most disastrous war (War of 1812) if the bank’s charter is not renewed.”
1:00-1:01hr 1816 Devastated by war and war debt, Congress grants new charter for the (private) Bank of the United States, again funded mainly by the federal government. The US Treasury winds up with 20% share, with the Bank creating additional money to loan private shareholders (mostly foreign) sufficient funds to buy the other 80%.
1:02-1:10hr 1828 Andrew Jackson elected president on platform to end massive corruption and fraud at the Bank of the United Statesby shutting it down. Nearly assassinated after “powerful Europeans” hire gunman to kill him. The USremains free of central bank control for 77 years, with state chartered banks assuming responsibility for money creation.
1:11-1:18hr Civil War European financial powers pressure Southern states to secede by boycotting their cotton. Ending slavery was not the original cause of US Civil War, as Lincolnoriginally had no intention of abolishing it.
1:19-1:27hr 1862 To finance the Civil War,  Lincoln issues $450 million in paper money (greenbacks) and is attacked by the London Times - which calls for the destruction of the US before it destroys the world’s monarchies. British troops mobilize in Canada and British navy mobilizes on Atlantic coast. The Rothschilds grant Napoleon III $3 million to seize Mexico. Russian czar stations battleships on West Coast and pledges to come to US defense if England and France enter Civil War (on behalf of the South). Lincoln agrees to allow national banks to temporarily issue currency through 1863 National Banking Act, though his government-issued greenbacks continue to circulate until 1994. German chancellor Otto von Bismarck predicts triumph for global banking cartel following Lincoln’s 1865 assassination. In 1934 Vancouver Mayor Gerry McGreer releases Secret Service records revealing John Wilkes Booth was hired by powerful banking interests.
1:28–1:30hr 1873 Banking interests pressure Congress to demonetize silver (which is far more plentiful than gold) and place all US money on gold standard. Deliberate contraction of the money supply leads to severe depression and unemployment (1/3 of US workforce unemployed in 1876). In 1877 riots calling for return of silver currency lead to 1878 Sherman Law, which allows limited number of silver coins to be minted.
1:37-1:38 hr 1881 President Garfield attacks the moneychangers and is assassinated.
1.38–1:47 hr 1891-1907 Determined to manipulate public opinion in favor of a new (private) central bank, the moneychangers deliberately shrink US money supply, causing 20 years of extreme economic instability. .
1:48-1:54 hr 1907 secret meeting of Rockefellers and other major banking families at Jekyll Island to draw up plans for new central bank called the Federal Reserve. President Taft (a Republican) refuses to support it, so moneychangers begin courting Woodrow Wilson (a Democrat)
1:54-1:57 hr 1913 Wilson defeats Taft with support from William Jennings Bryant and other currency reformers by promising he won’t support the new central bank. Wilson betrays his supporters and Federal Reserve Act passed during Christmas recess. The Act requires the federal government to borrow funding for operational expenses from the Federal Reserve. A federal income tax is adopted to ensure the government can make the interest payments.
2:13-2:17 hr 1905-1917 $20 million of Federal Reserve funds channeled to Bolsheviks via Chase Manhattan Bank (controlled by Rockefellers) after czar denies them access to Russian oil fields.
2:18- 2:29 hr 1929 Federal Reserve deliberately contracts money supply and crashes the stock market after all their members transfer their wealth from stocks to gold and cash. According to Milton Friedman, this contraction triggers Great Depression.
2:30-2:31hr 1931 Rep Louis McFadden warns that US banks are subsidizing the rise of Hitler, channeling over $30 billion in Federal Reserve funds via Chase Manhattan Bank.
2:32-2:44 hr 1933 Roosevelt prohibits US citizens from owning gold coins or bullion and forces them to turn all their gold to the federal government. All US Treasury gold becomes property of Federal Reserve and most of it is sold to European speculators.
2:45-2:50 hr 1945 a global central bank is formed through creation of IMF, World Bank, and International Bank of Settlements. All are run by private bankers, with intention of consolidating control of the global money supply.
2:51-2:58 hr 1989-1993 Economy of Japan and Mexico wiped out when Bank of International Settlements contracts the global money supply. Punitive IMF interest charges result in massive transfer of wealth from third world countries to World Bank. Continuing consolidation of central bank control with formation of NAFTA and WTO.

Still produced a sequel to the Money Masters in 2010 called The Secret of Oz in 2010. It focuses mainly on the rise of the Populist movement in the 1890s and the presidential campaigns of Populist Democrat William Jennings Bryant. Bryant ran on a platform of ending the power of private banks to issue money and returning to federally issued greenbacks and silver coinage. L Frank Baum, who wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was a strong Bryant supporter. The book is loaded with symbols related to monetary reform (for example, the silver slippers, Emerald City, and the yellow brick road).

Enjoy.

photo credit: Cea. via photopin cc

Reposted from Veterans Today

The NSA is the Tip of the Iceberg

 

Guest post by Steven Miller and Satish Musunuru

(Part 5 of a five-part post on the corporatization of Internet surveillance.)

The capitalist class deliberately distorts the class nature of the state. This is a scientific question, not an ideological one. Government is the administration of public money and resources in the name of society. The state is different. It is made up of the police, the courts and jails, the army, et al, and of course, the NSA. The capitalist class loves to present the state as a body that somehow stands above society, neutral to class interests, reigning with wisdom. One thing we have learned from Occupy, however, is that the police always seem to defend the corporations. They are hardly neutral. For both government and the state, law is simply the will of the ruling class, written down.

The purpose of the state is to defend the relations of production that are organized and imposed by the ruling class. Thus the state is a function of the relations of production, not the other way around. However, once established, it plays a formative role in organizing the relations of production for the class that rules the state.

In capitalism’s Industrial Era, J Edgar Hoover’s FBI collected dossiers on every politician, movement and individual that might pose a threat to state control. Today digital technology leads inexorably to the Surveillance State, actually only a small part of the entire state apparatus.

The US state has many manifestations: the military industrial complex, the media industrial complex that organizes the world’s most sophisticated propaganda war 24/7, the prison industrial complex, the corporate state, the surveillance state, the Migra, the militarized police we all saw at Occupies, open violations of the Constitution, the Department of Homeland Security, private prisons, secret ops, drones, extraordinary rendition, torture at every level, and so much more. Then of course we have the army, equipped with the world’s largest military budget, armed with some serious hardware, including the world’s largest supply of nuclear weapons. Corporations are inseparable from this. As they merge with the state, corporations today are rapidly developing police powers.

Social movements can sometimes reform the government, but state power does not permit you to reform the state. The idea that somehow the state will sit by passively while workers organize socialism is simply a fantasy. The state is programmed to intervene whenever the relations of production are threatened. Here and there, in relatively small-scale cases – Mondragon workers, for example, Kerala in India, Cuba, Nicaragua at one phase, etc – the nuisance is such that the state chooses not to intervene – but these are few and far between. The job of the state is to identify threats to capitalist control and move on them.

In the US today, the NSA works at one level; at another level, Homeland Security outsources police functions to corporations through contracts for profit. It’s budget for doing this has averaged over $30 billion a year since 2001. During Occupy, across the country, DHS has established “fusion centers”, often in corporations or banks, where police gathered surveillance and advised corporate leaders. Domain Centers (Oakland is the second, after New York City) are required for every port in the country.

The state’s response to the NSA scandal has been to go on a marketing campaign: “Resistance is Futile! We’ve got things coming at you that you can’t even imagine, way beyond Darth Vader!” This is a point worth considering. How can the American people possibly fight this?

The most basic step is to understand that things don’t have to be this way. Code can be changed and architectures can be re-designed. This is really an aspect of the tremendous battle of ideas that is breaking out in society. Every living system on Earth is in decline, except corporations. Corporations can be abolished by popular will if people are on the same accord, just as private property in slavery was abolished 150 years ago. These are historic times.

The American people have a long revolutionary history, but little recent experience with the process. Thus we don’t recognize the critical importance of these essential first steps of the battle that are appearing today. The future world will either be all corporate or all public. We can decide.

Here is how one of America’s great revolutionaries – John Adams, an outstanding exponent of capitalism – explained the process:

“The American Revolution was not a common event. Its effects and consequences have already been awful over a great part of the globe. And when and where are they to cease?

“But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced (emphasis added). The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations….

“The people of America had been educated in an habitual affection for England, as their mother country; and while they thought her a kind and tender parent, (erroneously enough, however, for she never was such a mother,) no affection could be more sincere. But when they found her a cruel bedlam, willing like Lady Macbeth, to “dash their brains out,” it is no wonder if their filial affections ceased, and were changed into indignation and horror.

“This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.”   (13)

Background and Notes

13)  John Adams to H. Niles, February 13, 1818

photo credit: paul.klintworth via photopin cc

Reposted from Daily Censored

 

Steven Miller has taught science for 25 years in Oakland’s Flatland high schools. He has been actively engaged in public school reform since the early 1990s. When the state seized control of Oakland public schools in 2003, they immediately implemented policies of corporatization and privatization that are advocated by the Broad Institute. Since that time Steve has written extensively against the privatization of public education, water and other public resources. You can email him at nanodog2@hotmail.com

***

Satish Musunuru draws upon his training as an engineer and his experience as a professional in Silicon Valley to understand the relationship between technology and corporate capitalism and how it has brought us to the ecological and societal crisis we find ourselves in. You can email him at guruji323@hotmail.com

 

A Marxian Analysis of Information Technology

Guest post by Steven Miller and Satish Musunuru

 (Part 4 of a five-part series on the corporatization of Internet surveillance.)

Relations of Production

Since Bill Gates raised the question, what do communists have to say about turning the Internet into private property? Karl Marx showed how, in every society up to this point in time, the relations of production ultimately strangle the development of the means of production. This, he explained, must lead to a period of social revolution.

The means of production, or productive forces, refers to the tools and technology of human society, up to and including the human mind. The relations of production means the legally established social relations between people – how they interact and work together – that are ultimately determined by forms of property. For example, Americans consider Freedom of Speech perhaps their most important right – guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. However, freedom of speech vanishes once you are on corporate property. Try telling the boss what you really think of him and you will see how far this right really goes.

That’s a relation of production. So are the minimum wage and the fact that women earn around 75% of what men do for the same job. All forms of discrimination and oppression pay off at the corporate bottom line.

Before the bourgeois revolution swept Europe in 1848, deposing almost all monarchies in its wake, a factory owner could hardly send his commodities down the river to market. Every minor princeling and self-proclaimed royal demanded the right to tax trade crossing their territory. This relation of production strangled the ability to sell products in order to realize capital and make private profit. Suddenly armies everywhere abolished this relation of production. In the same way, private property in digital technology deforms and shrivels the possibilities of the Internet.

“In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production….  At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution.”  (12)

Marx’s point is that the relations of production, fixed and frozen as private property by law, ultimately become antagonistic to the development of a technology that is highly fluid and increasingly more productive. This is an objective process, outside of our control, one that informs any subjective acts of insurrection. The relations of production under capitalism take myriad forms, but they ultimately come down to essential principles:

If you own the technology, you can appropriate all the production that people produce socially, today in an increasingly global system, by working with/for the technology. As private property, this production is yours to sell on the market for private profit. The necessities of life are distributed based on individual ability to pay for them. If you own little or nothing, you must sell your labor power to the owners of the technology in order to get money to survive.

None of these things have to be. We can imagine a different way to live. It was this basic human impulse that created the Internet.

A child can see the vast potential in digital technology. However, the “architecture of the system”, imposed by the outmoded relations of production of capitalism is definitely “in antagonism to” what a really developed Internet could be. These relations constantly “fetter” the development of computers and the Internet. If it doesn’t produce private property, it is discarded. Hence private Intranets determine how the code is configured. God doesn’t put all those ads on your screen, nor does he demand a tollbooth between you and the information you seek. Marx was prescient on this one.

Information objectively demands to be free. It is a social act, an activity; as communication, it demands consensus to establish meaning. This is a social relationship that is strangled by capitalist relations of production. Information is easy to collectivize and relatively hard to privatize.

Information is not the same thing as a tangible, material product, such as the latest Jordans or even an orange. I can transmit information to you without lessening my ability to control or use it. In Marxist terms, information has use value – you can use it how you will. With shoes, if I give them to you, I lose control. This objective nature of information constantly struggles against the capitalist demand that it become private property that they can sell for a profit. That is a fetter on technology.

Everyone knows that microelectronics constantly reduces exchange value – what you can sell it for. This flows from Moore’s Law – that the capacity of a computer chip doubles every 18 months, even as its value decreases. Exchange value tends toward zero to the extent that labor-less production is employed. This is because ever-decreasing amounts of human labor are involved. Long before Marx, Adam Smith, supposedly the high priest of capitalism, identified human labor power as the basis of all value. Labor-less production, the fastest growing type of production in the world today, is coming to pass with a vengeance. Production without labor necessarily demands distribution without money.

Attacks on net neutrality, filling your screen with commercial ads, various forms of corporate censorship, the domination of private search engines, the “Cloud” – all reflect the relations of production of capitalism. All serve to deform digital technology and subordinate it to the commercial interests of private corporations and the market.

Back in the Roman Empire, the hot new technology was the mule, the sterile offspring of a donkey and a horse. It was bigger and stronger than the donkey, and had far more stamina than the horse. The relations of production of slavery strangled this high tech development. Slaves could not personally sell the product of the mule, so when they took it out into the field, they beat it to death, “Hey Boss, you know how stubborn they are!”

But the thinking person, in antagonism to the relations of production of slavery, also understood that they could steal the mule, move three valleys away, and use this powerful new technology to feed their family and grow rich. Thus “begins the era of social revolution”. Since information and its technology objectively cannot be contained within the proscribed and narrow limits of private property, social revolution is already objectively going on. Today it is struggling into pass to our common subjective comprehension. The impulse to free information from corporate control gave birth to the Internet, open-source programming, Napster, jail-breaking your phone and the constant efforts to free digital technology for the 99%.

Background and Notes

12)  Karl Marx. Preface to The Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy. 1859

To be continued.

Reposted from Daily Censored

photo credit: Felix42 contra la censura via photopin cc

 ***

Steven Miller has taught science for 25 years in Oakland’s Flatland high schools. He has been actively engaged in public school reform since the early 1990s. When the state seized control of Oakland public schools in 2003, they immediately implemented policies of corporatization and privatization that are advocated by the Broad Institute. Since that time Steve has written extensively against the privatization of public education, water and other public resources. You can email him at nanodog2@hotmail.com

***

Satish Musunuru draws upon his training as an engineer and his experience as a professional in Silicon Valley to understand the relationship between technology and corporate capitalism and how it has brought us to the ecological and societal crisis we find ourselves in. You can email him at guruji323@hotmail.com

The Corporatization of the Internet

 

Guest post by Steven Miller and Satish Musunuru

(Part 3 of a five-part series about the corporatization of Internet surveillance.)

Bill Gates Dismisses Open Source Pioneers as Communists

From the beginning, Bill Gates argued that no public discussion of who controls the Internet should even be permitted. He famously called open-source pioneers  “new modern-day sort of communists”. (6)  Bill Clinton opined that corporations were the best way to develop the Internet. Al Gore and Gates re-defined the web as the “Information Super Highway”.

Of course, we know that super highways often have tollbooths, where you pay for the privilege of driving your car. Clinton began the massive wave of privatization, of both society in general and of the Internet in particular, that flourished under George W Bush and is expanding even more with Barack Obama. Clinton’s de-regulation of Wall Street set the stage for the looting of American by Wall Street banks, the 1% and their corporate attack dogs. Rajiv C. Shah & Jay P. Kesan amply describe this in “The Privatization of the Internet’s Backbone Network” (7)

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 deregulated the entire electromagnetic spectrum of the atomic vibrations we use for communication. This energy spectrum is as fundamental as the sun, but it was given away to corporations for chickenfeed. This was a huge step encouraging the privatization of Nature and natural processes.

Then the insurance model, essentially the cable-TV model, was imposed on the Internet: you pay a corporation for access to something that could easily be accessible for everyone for nothing. After all it’s simply a process of how you configure the software.

This massive centralization was clearly the exact opposite to the original intent of the Internet. The few massive super-corporations that already controlled the airwaves became ever more powerful. The great Uruguayan writer, Eduardo Galeano stated, “Never have so many been held incommunicado by so few”. (8)

The essential structure of the Internet is simply written down as code. It can be designed to benefit the public, or it can be configured to benefit private profit. Larry Lessig explains:

“The architecture of the original Internet minimized the opportunity for control, and that environment of minimum control encouraged innovation…. At its birth, the Internet gave individuals great freedoms of speech and privacy.

“But the story about liberty on the original Net had a sequel: what the architecture could give, it could take away. The inability to control was not fixed in nature. It was a function of the architecture. And as that architecture changed, the ability to control would change as well…. Technologies were being deployed to better monitor and control behavior, with the consequence, for better or worse, of limiting the liberty of the space. As the architecture changed, the freedom of the space would change, and change it did.” (9)

Privatization is therefore not something that just happens. It is engineered. This goes deeper. These days, people like to imagine the Internet as a vast network, spanning the globe, where gigabytes of information send pictures and blogs around the world in microseconds. However, the Internet is dwarfed by a larger, and far more sinister system of networks, the Intranet. The Intranet is the collection of corporate and military networks that are protected from the public by firewalls. These have expanded again into extranets – including collaborators from other private concerns into shielded activities. Needless to say, individuals have no access to their computers, but corporations and the NSA have access to yours.

Dan Schiller described the formative role of the Internet’s evil twin – the Intranet – back in 1999:

“Corporate applications of Internet technology – intracorporate and business-to-business – comprise the true fulcrum of Internet system development. Corporate networks are the guiding hand of technical experimentation within cyberspace and comprise the leading site of its creative ferment. (emphases added)”   (10)

Fast forward to 2013 – the corporate control of digital technology today has a evolved far from the original vision of a vast global network where everything is open for everyone. We could have public servers at no cost – we have public airports and roads – but we don’t. Increasingly everything is in the Cloud, and corporations own and control the Cloud. Software components, like those Berners-Lee accessed for free, are now sold as apps. Corporations determine who can use them, for a price. Even if certain corporate products are free, it is largely because corporations stand to gain even more from the data they have about users using those products. Facebook is a good example here because while the social networking service is arguably free, the data that they collect and analyze on a daily basis is far more valuable.

Almost all of the data and intelligence reside on the cloud, which is a fancy way of saying massive data centers spread around the world, owned by massive corporations like Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft. etc. These data centers account for up to 10% of the worldwide usage of electricity.

The computers and cell phones we now use constantly reach out to the cloud for even the smallest of activities. When we speak into a cellphone and see our words appearing on the screen, what’s happening is that our voice is sent over to the cloud, where it gets converted into English language words, and then sent back to the phone. It takes only milliseconds to do this and is not easily visible to the user. The cloud stores every word we ever say to the phone at least for a period of time. Such a simple act of converting spoken words to written words can actually be done on the phone itself, if it had the program, but it has become cheaper and more advantageous for corporations to do it on the cloud.

A more recent evolution is the development of “computers” with greatly devolved capacity, really just shells of computers, with little storage and an always-on connection to the cloud. Unlike normal computers, these computers cannot function without the Internet. They are simply a window into the cloud. If you lose one of these “computers” you lose only the hardware and none of the data because everything is stored in the cloud, which is owned by these private corporations. This is cited as a convenience to consumers but, as we see with the NSA, it can be potentially dangerous to live life in the cloud. Facebook claims they own everything ever posted on their platform – photos, videos, writings, songs, you name it.

Microelectronics drives all this and is changing the nature of property. In the 16th Century most private property was in land; all of it was tangible. Today lots property is intangible, including things like software, algorithms, and ideas. But private property is still the divine right of thugs. Thanks to the Supreme Court, we understand these thugs are “corporate people”. So what kind of people are these?

The great book, The Corporation, points out that corporations exhibit characteristics of a very specific kind of person – namely psychopaths! (11)  Like psychopaths, corporations are grandiose, manipulative, both charming and deceptive, unable to feel remorse and always refuse to accept responsibility. So we happily trust all of our technology and most of our military to the tender mercies of… psychopaths. You know, nice people like Ted Bundy!

We can draw some conclusions here:

As long as society allows the private ownership of information technology by corporations for profit, the unlimited positive potential of technology will be deformed to guarantee that profit, short-term, regardless of the long-term destruction of society and the planet.
Corporations control the Surveillance State, not vice-versa.
Corporations control every technology as private property. The sad lessons that Global Warming is trying to tell us, the utter corporate incompetence in the abuse of antibiotics, (just two examples!) shows that corporate control is inherently incompetent and short sighted.
Therefore only the expansion of real public ownership and control of technology, at every level, in every branch of the economy, can release the wondrous potential of technology without abuse. The world of the very near future is going to be either all corporate, with no public, or all public, with no corporations. Which future it will be is up to us.

Background and Notes

7)  “The Privatization of the Internet’s Backbone Network” by  Rajiv C. Shah & Jay P. Kesan (www.governingwithcode.org/journal_art...Backbone.pdf‎)

8) Zinn, Howard. A people’s history of the United States: 1492-present. 2003

8)  Lessig, op cit p 140

9)  Lessig, op cit, p 140

10)  Dan Schiller. Digital Capitalism. 1999, p 17

11)  Bakan. The Corporation – The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. 2004. p 56  (You can also view the fine movie of the same name – on

DVD.)

 To be continued.

photo credit: Domain Barnyard via photopin cc

Reposted from Daily Censored

Steven Miller has taught science for 25 years in Oakland’s Flatland high schools. He has been actively engaged in public school reform since the early 1990s. When the state seized control of Oakland public schools in 2003, they immediately implemented policies of corporatization and privatization that are advocated by the Broad Institute. Since that time Steve has written extensively against the privatization of public education, water and other public resources. You can email him at nanodog2@hotmail.com

***

Satish Musunuru draws upon his training as an engineer and his experience as a professional in Silicon Valley to understand the relationship between technology and corporate capitalism and how it has brought us to the ecological and societal crisis we find ourselves in. You can email him at guruji323@hotmail.com

 

 

The Early Internet Vision: Public and Free

Linux: Free Open Source Alternative to Microsoft Windows

Guest Post by Steven Miller and Satish Musunuru

(Part 2 of a five-part series on the corporatization of Internet surveillance.)

Back to the Future

Back in the early 1990s, the Internet was barely beginning. Everyone was dazzled about the possibilities of a universal communicator, where any could connect to any other individual or any other thing for free. The US Post Office was prepared to offer universal connectivity to everyone. Infinite global networking was on the agenda. The natural cooperative human instinct was in ascendency.

The basic elements of what would become the Internet had all been developed for free, outside of corporations, and had been given away to the public with no concerns for making private profit. The different technologies built upon each other through the efforts of a highly distributed network of engineers all over the world. Each piece built upon the foundation laid by another.

TCP/IP was created as a basic protocol to communicate between computers (3) and was available to everyone, although funded by ARPANET, which was a project of DARPA, which was and still is part of the Defense Department. These days DARPA is working on different technologies, like drones.

TCP/IP established the foundation on top of which came email, which uses protocols such as SMTP, POP and IMAP. The key thing is all these use TCP/IP for the actual transmission. HTTP which is the basis for the WWW also uses TCP/IP. So do Instant messaging and everything else we’ve come to enjoy using.

TCP/IP led to email and HTTP. Tim Berners-Lee, working at CERN, the European nuclear lab, tied the free software TCP/IP (for establishing domain protocols) to the free software for standardize common text for every computer – HTTP. augmented by the equally-free APACHE server, and created open public access for anyone through WWW protocols. A server stores information and sends it to multiple clients when they request it. This is what’s happening when we open our browser and go to weather.com. Then Berners-Lee released the web to the world as HTML markup language in 1989. This standardized web page building and linking. (4)

Suddenly computers anywhere could talk to each other. Soon the University of Illinois gave away MOSAIC – a free graphic interface. The open-source movement added Firefox – a free web browser. The basic open-source platform language LINUX spread around the world and is even grudgingly used by Microsoft.

Corporations for years had constrained the development of digital technology so they could make a private profit off selling privileged access to information. Berners-Lee designed the Internet so that it would be free:

“I had designed the Web so there should be no centralized place where someone would have to ‘register’ a new server, or get approval of its contents.”  (5)

The idea was to establish open peer2peer networks, where the computing power, and therefore the choices, resides at either end. The most popular search engines massive servers, on the other hand, keep that power in the center, and use algorithms to determine which sites are featured first.

Since a server is centralized, it opens the door to the notion of customers. At this point, the contours begin to change as corporations start figuring out this Internet thing and start releasing their own products as competitors to freely available open source products. Corporations moved in for the kill.

The next stage in this trend is in the development of the browser. MOSAIC was the open and free alternative. But Microsoft came along with its own closed Internet Explorer and started giving it away for free with Windows. Mozilla then developed a free and superior open-source browser. Corporations struggled to develop a browser superior to this, but it now carries the bulk of Internet traffic.

Why do corporations give hardware and software away for free? Because they see a lot more profit potential in getting other corporations and citizens locked into their ecosystems. The race is to become the platform. Apple has successfully done this with their complete line of hardware/software products, which are notoriously closed to external developers. Now corporations began to exert control.

Background and Notes

3)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite

4)  Larry Lessig. The Future of Ideas. 2001 , p 52 – 57

5)  Lessig, op cit, p 44

To be continued.

Reposted from Daily Censored

photo credit: aid85 via photopin cc

Steven Miller has taught science for 25 years in Oakland’s Flatland high schools. He has been actively engaged in public school reform since the early 1990s. When the state seized control of Oakland public schools in 2003, they immediately implemented policies of corporatization and privatization that are advocated by the Broad Institute. Since that time Steve has written extensively against the privatization of public education, water and other public resources. You can email him at nanodog2@hotmail.com

***

Satish Musunuru draws upon his training as an engineer and his experience as a professional in Silicon Valley to understand the relationship between technology and corporate capitalism and how it has brought us to the ecological and societal crisis we find ourselves in. You can email him at guruji323@hotmail.com

Digital Deformation

Guest Post by Steven Miller and Satish Musunuru, September 1, 2013

 (Part 1 of a five-part series about the corporatization of Internet surveillance)

“The executive branch has now confirmed that the ‘rules, regulations and court-imposed standards for protecting the privacy of Americans’ have been violated thousands of times each year.  We have previously said that the violations of these laws and rules were more serious than had been acknowledged, and we believe Americans should know that this confirmation is just the tip of a larger iceberg.”           US Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall  (1)

The Surveillance State is the inevitable development of a corporate-controlled Internet. Today some 70% of the NSA budget goes to corporations, which routinely implement computer programs that are hidden from the public as “proprietary information.” It’s not much of a jump from privatized and hidden corporate systems to privatized and hidden state surveillance systems.

In this respect, Oakland, California is being transmogrified rapidly. Oakland is the country’s 4th largest port, is the port for Silicon Valley, and the site of the Port Shutdown by Occupy in November 2011. The city is spending $2 million to collaborate with the Port and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) jointly kicking in more millions to develop a “Domain Awareness Center”. This center will centralize all video feeds from Port property, including Jack London Square, the Bay Bridge, the Port, the Oakland Coliseum the airport and Wal Mart.

The DAC is poised to extend into the city, through the city’s notorious police department, the highway patrol and the BART police, and intends to seize the video feeds from the high schools. There is a vicious irony here. Oakland’s Port is legally separated from the city. For decades, people have begged the Port to use some of their $100 billion-a-year revenue to help out the city’s impoverished schools. They have never given a penny, but now they take and privatize. All this video data will be collected by a private corporation that has a record of fraud, secrecy and kickbacks – SAIC, the Science Applications International Corporation. (2) Does this make any sense for democracy?

Mussolini is famously quoted as saying that fascism is the merger of corporations and the state. We always knew that corporations are in bed with the government. In fact, the US openly brags about the system of legalized bribery called Lobbying.

But how did corporations accrue the police powers of the state? One question, then, is… did corporations create the Surveillance State, or did the Surveillance State open the door for the corporations? Which is in control here?

Background and Notes

1)  Wyden, Udall. Statement on Reports of Compliance Violations Made Under NSA Collection Programs, Friday, August 16, 2013

 2) Bond-Graham, Winston. “Oakland’s Surveillance Contractor Has a History of Fraud.” EastBayExpress.com, August 28, 2013

 

To be continued.

Originally posted at Daily Censored

photo credit: weaverphoto via photopin cc

Steven Miller has taught science for 25 years in Oakland’s Flatland high schools. He has been actively engaged in public school reform since the early 1990s. When the state seized control of Oakland public schools in 2003, they immediately implemented policies of corporatization and privatization that are advocated by the Broad Institute. Since that time Steve has written extensively against the privatization of public education, water, and other public resources. You can email him at nanodog2@hotmail.com

***

Satish Musunuru draws upon his training as an engineer and his experience as a professional in Silicon Valley to understand the relationship between technology and corporate capitalism and how it has brought us to the ecological and societal crisis we find ourselves in. You can email him at guruji323@hotmail.com

The McDonalds Strikes – US vs New Zealand

US fast food workers celebrated Labor Day this year with a series of rolling strikes in 60 cities. The McDonald’s strikes, organized by Fast Food Forward, first started in New York City last November and gradually spread across the country. The movement to unionize McDonald’s is international, and New Zealand workers also participated. Fortunately our fast food workers are a little ahead of their US counterparts. Minimum wage service workers first formed a union here, called Unite, in 2003.

The purpose of Unite is to represent minimum wage service workers, not only in the fast food industry, but in other retail outlets, call centers, casinos, security companies, movie theaters, language schools and hospitals. The New Zealand workforce is in a similar situation as British and North American workers. Over the past three decades, the export of  hundreds of thousands of well paying manufacturing jobs to third world countries has put hundreds of thousands of Kiwis out of work, forcing them to seek minimum wage jobs in fast food and retail. Here, as in the US, the fast food sector is far more difficult to unionize than the manufacturing sector. Union organizing is easiest when large numbers of workers are stably employed at a single site. The fast food industry typically employs large numbers of young workers who change jobs frequently at widely dispersed sites.

New Zealand was one of the first countries to win a collective bargaining agreement with McDonald’s in 2006. And contrary to the dire predictions put out by McDonald’s Inc, the presence of unions and collective bargaining agreements in our fast food restaurants hasn’t caused an increase in automation or a decrease in the number of jobs. Unite just ratified their third union contract with McDonald’s the last week in August. Negotiations to renew this contract, which expired in 2011, broke down in April. Thus the last four months have seen rolling strike action across New Zealand similar to the recent US strikes.

Why the US Lags Behind

Obviously Unite is way ahead of American workers, having already won the right to be represented by a union and bargain collectively. In the US when a non-union employer violates hours, pay, or health and safety laws (McDonald’s is a notorious offender), an employee’s only option is to take them to court. When they belong to a union, the union can intercede and force the employer to obey the law. In the US fast food chains (Taco Bell, KFC, Subway, Burger King) oppose unions and collective bargaining as a matter of principle. Moreover they frequently punish workers who try to start unions – usually by firing them. The federal laws outlawing this type of retaliation are cumbersome and difficult to enforce.

The main reason New Zealand’s drive to unionize McDonald’s has been so successful is because we have nothing comparable to the anti-union Taft Hartley law here. This 1948 US law allows management to campaign against a unionizing drive with coercive scare tactics, to preempt union organizing by petitioning the National Labor Relations Board for a union certification or decertification election, and to delay union certification by demanding NLRB hearings on key matters of dispute (time the company uses to coerce workers to vote against the union). Slowdowns, sit down and wildcat strikes are all illegal under the Taft Hartley Law.

Ironically this means that Fast Food Forward has more freedom than an official union would. Recently some of their members to pressure a St Louis McDonalds to reinstate an organizer they had fired. If a recognized union participates in a wildcat strike, their leaders can be fined or jailed.

Fast Food Forward Demands Living Wage

Workers in Fast Food Forward who are struggling to afford basic necessities for their families like housing and food on a minimum wage of $7.25 are demanding an increase in the entry level wage to $15. Predictably the business press claims a wage increase this large is counterproductive – that it will 1) force McDonald’s to automate and cut jobs and 2) drive McDonald’s shareholders away by reducing profits and dividends.

The first argument is pure scaremongering, as New Zealand and other countries* have successfully unionized their McDonald’s restaurants without any loss of jobs. The second argument blatantly misrepresents the actual financial position of McDonald’s Inc. A close look at the company’s portfolio indicates they are literally wallowing in money.

According to Forbes, McDonald’s presently ranks as one of the top 25 dividend payers on Wall Street with an annualized yield of $3 per share. Moreover the McDonald’s website reveals they have accumulated $10 billion in what they refer to “excess cash” that they are using to buy back shares from stockholders – a common maneuver to inflate the stock price. Their CEO Don Thompson also claims a goodly portion of this “excess cash” for his $979,167 salary and $1.4 million bonus.

 

*Other countries with McDonald’s collective bargaining agreements include

Sweden, Denmark, Iceland – all McDonald’s unionized

Germany, France, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, Australia – “substantial” numbers unionized.

 

photo credit: Steve Rhodes via photopin cc

A Listening Session on Syria

 

Here’s the response I got from Rep Jim McDermott to my email on Syria:

Dear Friends,

In the past week, I have received hundreds of calls from constituents about a possible military action in Syria. It’s a serious issue that deserves a public debate, and while I have heard from President Obama and his national security team, I need to hear from you. I will be asked to vote on this issue as your Representative and I want to give you the chance to voice your opinions in person.

I will be hosting a listening session this Sunday to hear your thoughts and concerns regarding the current situation in Syria. Please join me.

Listening Session on Our Options in Syria

Sunday, September 8

7:00 pm

University Temple United Methodist Church

1415 NE 43rd St, Seattle, 98105

Map It!

Please RSVP to my District Office or on my Facebook page.

District Office: (206) 553-7170

Facebook Event

Sincerely,

Congressman Jim McDermott

PS – If you’d like to stay up to date on what I’m doing in Washington or in DC, sign up for my e-newsletter, find me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter!

 

A big contrast to the weaselly response I got from Microsoft millionaire
Sen Maria Cantwell:

Dear Dr. Bramhall,

Thank you for contacting me regarding  the ongoing situation in Syria.   I appreciate hearing from you on this matter.

I am currently  reviewing the language of the proposed legislation that Congress is debating to authorize military action against Syria. I am deeply concerned about the atrocities committed by the Assad regi me against the Syrian people.  I continue to support humanitarian aid to the Syrian people and military aid to moderate fo rces in the Syrian opposition.  However, I have serious questions about the strategic goals and outcomes of a U.S. military strike in Syria.  I look forward to learning more from the Obama Administration on its end goals and its strategy to avoid open-ended involvement in this conflict. At the same time, our nation must work with our allies to protect American interests in the region, including Israel. 

On September 4, 2013, the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations approved by a 10-7 vote a draft resolution that would authorize President Barack Obama to use U.S. military force in Syria. If enacted, this resolution would prohibit U.S. troops on the ground, and would set a limited timeframe for any U.S. military involvement.  U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has announced that the full Senate will debate and vote on the resolution no later than the week of September 9, 2013. 

On August 31, 2013, President Barack Obama announced he would seek Congressional authorization for a limited U.S. military strike in Syria.  The President’s announcement was made shortly after the White House released an intelligence assessment to the public which concluded with “high confidence” that the Syrian government deployed chemical weapons on its citizens during the morning of August 21, 2013. 

The United States and the international community have strongly condemne d the use of chemical weapons.  I have heard from many Washingtonians who are concerned about the atrocities  committed and th e safety of the Syrian people.  I have also heard from many Washingtonians who are deeply concerned about the potential use o f U.S. military force in Syria.  As the United States recovers from a decade of war  that has put a strain on our military families and our country , it is important that Congress and the President exercise caution in this decision. A government’s illegal use of chemical weapons on its own people is indefensible and unacceptable; however, the use of U.S. military force should not be taken lightly. 

Please be assured that I will keep your thoughts in mind as this situation develops.

Sincerely, 

Maria Cantwell

United States Senator

 

I got no response at all from Sen Patty Murray.